Celebrating 50 Years of The Doors

Today in Los Angeles is "Day of the Doors," a 50th Anniversary tribute to the legendary rock band, The Doors! The official proclamation will be made by Los Angeles City Council member Mike Bonin during a public event at the intersection of  Pacific and Windward Avenues, the location of the iconic “Venice” sign in Venice. 

The Doors's First Album

The day was chosen because the band's debut album was released on January 4, 1967 on Elektra Records. As the official press release notes, The Doors are quite possibly the most legendary Los Angeles band of all time and certainly one of the top California rock music groups of the 1960s. 

After the release of its first album, The Doors became quite popular in around Los Angeles music clubs. However, it wasn't until a breakout performance five months later at the KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in Marin County that the Doors began to be known throughout the State of California. The "Fantasy Fair" was actually the first outdoor rock festival in American history, predating the well-known Monterey Pop International Festival by one week. The Doors did not play Monterey, however, so it was the Fantasy Fair that helped introduce the band to the skyrocketing number of rock music fans in the Bay Area celebrating the Summer of Love.

The Doors at the KFRC "Fantasy Fair"

The California Historical Society will feature images from the Fantasy Fair in its upcoming exhibition, "On the Road to the Summer of Love," part of a statewide celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Additionally, the Marin County Fair will be exploring the history of the Fantasy Fair (and the Doors performance at it) in an exhibition at the 2017 Marin County Fair. 

Additional Links

http://laist.com/2017/01/03/day_of_the_doors.php
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/doors-plot-50th-anniversary-celebration-in-los-angeles-w458258
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-doors-day-los-angeles-50th-anniversary-20170104-story.html

New Year's Wail/Whale: The Quiet (?!) Before the Storm

Janis Joplin and Big Brother & The Holding Company perform at the New Year's Wail in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on January 1st, 1967
Malcolm Lubliner/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

On New Year's Day in 1967, The Hell's Angels and the Diggers, two of the catalytic forces in the rapidly growing counterculture community in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco threw a massive party in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. In many ways, the party, called the New Year's Wail/Whale, was a lot like the "Love Pageant Rally" that had been held a few months earlier in October in almost the same exact spot; there was free music by Big Brother & The Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), the Grateful Dead, and many other groups using the back of a flatbed truck as a stage. Similar to the event in October, the Wail/Whale drew a couple thousand mostly young people representing a cross section of people living in the "Haight" neighborhood at the time. 

The scene at the New Year's Wail/Whale (UPI photo)

Yet, in retrospect, this event deserves special attention for its timing. Just 13 days later, the Haight (and the World) would forever be changed in the aftermath of the Human Be-In, the massive counterculture celebration in Golden Gate Park that would launch the Summer of Love. Thus, the Wail/Whale would be the last big event created nearly entirely by and for the original counterculture types that created the Haight-Ashbury movement. 

The Wail/Whale was unique for other reasons, including why it was held in the first place. The party in the Panhandle was sponsored by the Hell's Angels to thank the Haight community for raising money to bail out two of its members that had been arrested less than two weeks earlier during the Diggers' "Death of Money" parade that was held, in part, to signal the 'rebirth' of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. 

Images from the "Death of Money" parade. Photos by Gene Anthony. 

During the parade, two Hells Angels, Chocolate George and Hairy Henry, were arrested for low-level crimes: letting a passenger ride illegally on a motorcycle and interfering with an arrest. (Chocolate George would die in a fateful accident in the Haight less than a year later; his funeral was a landmark event for the Haight community).

Charles "Chocolate George" Hendricks

The New Year's Wail/Whale is also noteworthy because it helped inspire the launch of the "The Communication Company," the publishing arm of the Diggers. ComCo, as the publishing effort was called, was created by Chester Anderson and Claude Hayward; the two were captured by the creative energy and partnership between the Hell's Angels and the Diggers on display that day.  As several researchers have noted, the published writings of the Diggers---in leaflets, anonymous manifestos and single street sheets---played an important role in the Haight-Ashbury community leading up to, and during, the Summer of Love in the Spring and Summer of 1967. 

Using a mimeograph, ComCo produced a wide range of printed materials for the Haight community that was also reading the recently-launched San Francisco Oracle, a more psychedelic-oriented publication. Together, ComCo and The Oracle represented the diversity of thought and creative energy in the Haight during the period before the world rushed in....

California Vintage: Wine and Spirits in the Golden StateThe Great Depression

Maxine Albro, Grape Harvesting Scene, (detail) California Agriculture, 1934

Public Works of Art Project (PWAP)

“Wine is a habit, an industry, and an art,” wrote the editors Fortune Magazine in 1934 as the Great Depression (1929–39) ravaged the country. It was a statement the public had not heard very often during the prior decade under Prohibition, but nevertheless it hinted at the industry’s possibilities.

The fresco painter Maxine Albro saw the industry’s importance to the Golden State. Her 1934 mural California Agriculture joined 26 others by Bay Area artists commissioned to adorn the walls of San Francisco’s Coit Tower—the first and largest New Deal federal recovery program for artists.

The winemaking scene in Albo’s 42-foot mural, which she based on her visit to Sonoma County’s wineries, celebrates an industry historically considered California’s most prosperous.

 “We Want Wine,” 1933

http://sanantoniowinery.com/history/

Though California had been making the majority of the country’s wine, the industry took many years to recover from Prohibition (1920–33). Obstacles included legal restrictions (wine was legal in only 26 in 1934) as well as costly repairs to reopened wineries and lack of knowledge by new winemakers. As Paul Garrett, considered the dean of American Wine Growers, wondered in 1934, “if wine were properly presented to the American people might they not accept it for what it is—a wholesome, health-giving accompaniment of good food?”

Dorothea Lange, The White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco, 1933

Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration

It was also hoped that Prohibition’s repeal in 1933 would help solve the devastating unemployment following the 1929 stock market crash. As Garrett proposed, “The development of a wine industry in this country comparable to that in France would wipe out unemployment and provide a shortage of labor able to absorb further technological unemployment for a generation to come.”

But during Prohibition, Americans had become used to drinking sweet, high-alcohol wines. The “art of wine”—and the idea of wine as a daily beverage—had yet to reemerge after Prohibition’s repeal in 1933.

Lehmann Printing and Lithographing Company Label, Baronet Apple Wine Label, 1930s

California Historical Society, Kemble Collections on Western Printing and Publishing

Wine historian Thomas Pinney explains further:

There was some uncertainty about, and some variety in, the sorts of wine offered immediately after Repeal. It is interesting to note that some Prohibition wine was advertised—that is, wine that had been made during the Prohibition years but that could not then be sold. Perhaps most of that wine was of doubtful character, being “pricked,” or on its way to vinegar. But some was put out for sale. 

Then there were novelty wines: carbonated “champagne” was one. Around 1936 there was a flurry of interest in orange wine, an alcoholic beverage fermented from oranges and then fortified with spirits distilled from the resulting “wine.” I suppose that the attraction for the winemakers was a glut of oranges to be had cheaply, the sort of abundance in the midst of want that so often occurred in the Depression years. 

Advertisement, Puma’s Orange Wine, 1937

Collection of Thomas Pinney

Nevertheless, there was hope for the diminished wine industry. It came with the growth of industrial methodology, the establishment of the Wine Institute (1934) and the Wine Advisory Board (1938), and the California Agricultural Marketing Act of 1937, which under the agricultural umbrella of the state gave new status to winemakers as “winegrowers.”

Victor W. Geraci, University of California, Berkeley food and wine historian, explains:

For an industry just emerging from the repression of Prohibition, this agricultural status was important in relaxing a “crazy-quilt” of local, regional, and state laws restricting growing, making, and distribution of wine. Eventually, over two hundred fifty wineries and ten thousand growers (nearly 90 percent of all the state’s industry) took advantage of the 1937 California Agricultural Marketing Act that allowed agricultural specialty groups to form a Marketing Order for Wine. The wine industry now had a uniform voice.

Ruth Taylor White, Wine Map of California, 1935

Published by the Wine Advisory Board, San Francisco

Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection; www.davidrumsey.com

In 1934, only about 11 million cases of wine—most of them dessert wine—were sold. The policies originated during the Depression slowly achieved results, and with the victory of California in the 1976 Paris wine tasting, the industry would never be the same.

Watch for the next blog in our series California Vintage: Wine and Spirits in the Golden State on December 19.

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources
Editors, “Can wine become an American habit?” Fortune Magazine (1934); http://fortune.com/2012/03/25/can-wine-become-an-american-habit-fortune-1934/

Victor W. Geraci, “Fermenting a Twenty-First Century California Wine Industry,” Agricultural History 78, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 438–65

Oral history interview with Maxine Albro and Parker Hall, 1964 July 27, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-maxine-albro-and-parker-hall-12350

Thomas Pinney, City of Vines: A History of Wine in Los Angeles (Berkeley: Heyday Books/California Historical Society, forthcoming September 2017)

Wine Institute, Milestones in California Wine, 1934–2009; www.wineinstitute.org

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Love Wine and Spirits? Don’t Miss These CHS Events!

December 10, 2016–April 16, 2017
California Historical Society, 678 Mission, San Francisco

CHS’ new exhibition, Vintage: Wine, Beer, and Spirits Labels from the Kemble Collections on Western Printing and Publishing


December 13, 6:30 pm
California Historical Society, 678 Mission, San Francisco

The California Historical Society’s annual holiday party
Craft cocktails, legendary California wine, innovative brews, and live entertainment

Read more

______________________________________________________________________________

Thomas Pinney’s City of Vines: A History of Wine in Los Angeles is the winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award. Read more about the Award

https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/publications/book_award.html 
______________________________________________________________________________

"The Mother of All Demos" and the Hippies

SRI during the "Mother of All Demos"

December 9, 1968 was one of the most significant days in personal technology history. On that day, computer scientist Douglas Engelbart demonstrated experimental computer technologies that 40 years later would become ubiquitous in homes and workplaces around the globe. During the "The Mother of All Demos," as it would later be known, Engelbart's live demonstration, at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, featured the introduction of the computer mouse as well as video conferencing, teleconferencing, word processing, and hypertext---many of the tools that would define personal computing and social networking decades later. Engelbart's presentation was the first to publicly demonstrate all these elements in a single system, then called the "oN-Line System" or, NLS. 

NLS

Engelbart's demonstration showed that computers could be used for complex group communications over long distances and for the enhancement of individual and collective learning. The demonstration was highly influential and spawned similar projects at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s, and influenced both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows graphical user interface operating systems in the 1980s and 1990s.

Doug Engelbert and an early mouse

Part of the demonstration was controlled, in part, by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, CA about 30 miles South of where the live demonstration was held. Englebart's system was linked via telephone lines and microwave channels to a terminal at SRI. The video production of the SRI end of the demonstration was led by a non computer scientist by the name of Stewart Brand. A few months earlier, Brand had launched the Whole Earth Catalog, a publication that helped provide tools and connectivity to people living on communes around the country. 

As Fred Turner notes in From Counterculture to Cyberculture:

"...Like the NLS system, the Catalog would link multiple, geographically distributed groups and allow them to collaborate—albeit not in real time. And like the hyperlinked texts of Engelbart's system, the Whole Earth Catalog presented its readers with a system of connections. In the Catalog, no text stood apart from every other; each was part of an informational or social system, and each offered a doorway through which the reader could enter one of those systems..."

Nearly three years before "Mother of All Demos," Brand had helped launch the hippie counterculture era by heping produce the three-day Trips Festival, a three-day acid test/music/performing arts extravaganza that, according to Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, kicked off "The Haight Ashbury Era."

The fact that Brand was part of the Trips Festival and, then, part of the SRI lanch of the NLS system is quite symbolic of the links between the counterculture and the rise of the personal computer and internet technologies. As Turner details in From Counterculture to Cyberculture and John Markoff notes in What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, the personal computer and early internet technologies were created by innovators and scientists influenced by the free-thinking hippie counterculture spirit that reached its apex in late 1960s and early 1970s in the Bay Area. Stewart Brand touches upon this below:

Perhaps most significantly, Brand, who found himself part of the teams behind the Trips Festival and SRI demonstration, is credited as a major influence on Steve Jobs and his early vision for Apple Computer. As noted in Cult of Mac, Jobs often cites the impact of the Whole Earth Catalog on his thinking. During Jobs’ famous commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, he referred to Brand’s publication as “Google, in paperback form” in terms of importance, and referenced its mantra of “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”

-----------------------

Read more about the "Mother of All Demos" and Stewart Brand below:

https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1209computer-mouse-mother-of-all-demos/

http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/817415_chap4.html

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/06.01.05/dormouse-0522.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/05/stewart-brand-whole-earth-catalog

http://blog.longnow.org/02008/06/04/mother-of-all-demos/

http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/1968Demo.html

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/an-homage-to-douglas-engelbart-and-a-critique-of-the-state-of-tech/?_r=0

https://nowweknowem.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/douglas-engelbart-gave-the-mother-of-all-demos-today-in-1968-where-he-demonstrated-for-the-first-time-a-complete-integrated-computer-hardwaresoftware-system-now-we-know-em/

http://www.kapor.com/writing/markoffreview/

http://www.mythicjourneys.org/guest_brand.html

https://www.sri.com/work/timeline-innovation/timeline.php?timeline=computing-digital#!&innovation=computer-mouse-interactive-computing

https://www.sri.com/work/timeline/engelbart-dawn-interactive-computing-40th-anniversary

www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo-detailed-outline.html

http://www.dougengelbart.org/press/press.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-10/the-last-word-on-the-grateful-dead-maybe-

x

Remembering a Founding Mother of San Francisco: Juana Briones y Tapia de Miranda

Descendants of Juana Briones pose before the reconstruction of her adobe-filled wall at the California Historical Society, San Francisco, January 26, 2014 

California Historical Society

More than a dozen men and women gathered in January 2014 at the opening of an exhibition at the California Historical Society. Some of them had never met before. But they all had something special in common: their ancestor, a Californio woman of Spanish, indigenous, and African descent named Juana Briones y Tapia de Miranda (1802–1889), recognized by one historian as “the most prominent woman of provincial California.” They had come to the learn about her and her legacy at the exhibition Juana Briones y su California ~ Pionera, Fundadora, Curandera (pioneer, founder, healer).

These descendants are standing in front of the exhibition’s centerpiece—a segment of a wall from Juana’s homesite in Palo Alto dating to the 1840s. The wall is a rare example of post-and-beam construction, insulated with unformed adobe mud. It is one of the few historic artifacts salvaged from Juana’s Rancho la Purísima Concepción. Deconstruction of her home containing this remnant of the original wall began in May 2011. A few months later, when demolition ended, a rare structure and significant piece of California history was lost.

Wall segment from Juana Briones’s Palo Alto homesite on display, Juana Briones y su California, 2014 Preservation work by Gil Sanchez, FAIA

California Historical Society

Today the wall is in storage with the City of Palo Alto, awaiting a new home at the Palo Alto History Museum, whose historic building will be reconstructed in the near future.

But the commitment to tell the story of the house and its owner was not. In 2014, CHS honored the contributions of Juana Briones—rancher, farmer, businesswoman, healer, landowner—with a bilingual exhibition at its San Francisco headquarters and online. Uniquely, the exhibition reconstructed Juana’s life in 19th-century California) during California’s transformative Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. periods—all in the absence of any known personal objects of hers.

From the wall remnant, historic seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts, accounts of early travelers to the Bay Area, legal papers, maps, and deeds, an image emerged of this potent, resourceful, and creative woman who convincingly still represents the spirit and promise of our state.

The photo essay below, drawn from the exhibition, commemorates Juana—who died on December 3, 1889—as part of an ongoing effort to keep her history and spirit alive.

Artist unknown, Las castas, c. 1700s

Courtesy of CONACLTA-INAH-MEX

Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologie e Historia

Widespread diversity characterized 18th-century Mexico, the home of Juana’s parents and grandparents, who were of Spanish, African, and probably Indian descent. Socio-racial designations, as represented in this painting, were part of the Spanish Empire’s casta system, an elaborate hierarchy of identities based on racial mixing, family lineage, economic position, and other factors. In missionized Alta California (Upper California, or roughly what we now know as the State of California), these social distinctions were replaced by a new hierarchy between the Hispanic colonial settlers and Native Californians. 

Map of Juan Batista de Anza’s Route to Alta California in 1775–76

Courtesy National Park Service

Juana’s mother, Ysidora Tapia, traveled with Juan Batista de Anza to Alta California in 1775–76 from Mexico to San Francisco, where de Anza founded the Presidio of San Francisco. Juana was born in Villa de Branciforte (present-day Santa Cruz) in 1802.

Adobe House at El Polín Spring, The Presidio, San Francisco, 2013

California Historical Society, photograph by Rebeca Méndez 

After her mother’s death, Juana (age 10) moved with her family to the Presidio de San Francisco and then to El Polín Spring, a settlement adjacent to the Presidio. An adobe foundation was discovered in 2003 by a Stanford University archaeological team in partnership with the Presidio Archaeology Lab. It is believed to be one of two houses occupied by the Briones family. The foundation was later reburied to preserve the site. This reconstructed foundation is part of an interpretive exhibit at The Presidio in San Francisco.    

San Francisco de Asis Mission, Marriage Record, Apolinario Miranda and Juana Briones, 

May 14, 1820

Courtesy of the Mission Dolores Museum

At the age of eighteen, Juana married 26-year-old Presidio soldier Apolinario Miranda at Mission Dolores. Although the couple had eleven biological children together, their marriage was marked by domestic abuse and legal strife. Seeking to live separately from her abusive husband and strike out on her own, Juana moved in the late 1830s to Yerba Buena, a flourishing town and soon to become a hub for international commerce.

C. M. Waseurtz, Rough Sketch of a Kitchen and Dining Room on a Farm in California, 1842–43

Courtesy of the Society of California Pioneers

This drawing provides a glimpse into domestic life in Mexican California in the 1840s. Juana and other Californios lived in small adobe houses with gabled, tiled roofs. Waseurt’s drawing shows a comal (griddle) for cooking tortillas; a pot for cooking atole (gruel), bean dishes, and meat stews; and an open fire for roasting meat.

William Henry Thomes, On Land and Sea, or, California in the Years 1843, ’44, and ’45 

(Boston: DeWolfe, Fiske, 1884)

California Historical Society

One of the first non-native residents of Yerba Buena (renamed San Francisco in 1847), Juana was legendary for her friendship with the sailors whose ships arrived there to trade for hides and tallow, whale oil, and other commodities. She sold them goods from her North Beach home, treated their illnesses and wounds, and bravely harbored deserters. 

One such visitor to San Francisco in the 1840s was William Henry Thomes, who wrote a semi-fictional account of his travels when he was a young sailor, includes anecdotes about the “rich widow” “Senora Abarono” and her Yerba Buena farm, including his opinion that “If the men had some of the energy of that buxom, dark-faced lady, California would have been a prosperous State, even before it was annexed to this country, and we would have had to fight harder than we did to get possession.”

Fritz Wikersheim, Entrance to San Francisco Bay Taken from Telegraph Hill, California, 1845–51

Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

In Yerba Buena, Juana quickly identified and seized an opportunity that would forge her reputation there as an astute businesswoman and entrepreneur. By 1837, she had built an adobe house in present-day North Beach and established a dairy farm that supplied milk to sailors, merchants, and other visitors. This artist’s rendering shows the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula, the bay, and Marin. The settlement pictured is Yerba Buena (present-day North Beach). Footpaths to the presidio cross the northern tip of Russian Hill behind. The corral and home shown in the flatland may be Juana’s residence.

Briones Family Chest, undated

Courtesy of the Bolinas Museum; photograph by Rebeca Méndez

During this time, Juana served as a curandera (healer) at Mission Dolores, the Presidio, and Yerba Buena. According to a Briones family descendant, this painted Chinese chest belonged to Juana’s niece in Bolinas. Legend has it that sailors gave Juana a red-lacquered Chinese chest as a token of their gratitude after she cured one of their shipmates.

  

Doctor’s Bag Belonging to Pablo Briones, 19th century

Courtesy of the Bolinas Museum; photograph by Rebeca Méndez

According to a Briones family descendant, this medicine bag belonged to Juana’s nephew Pablo Briones, who worked as a doctor in Bolinas. Juana may have inspired and trained Pablo. The family tradition of curanderismo (folk healing) was also carried on by Juana’s sister Guadalupe Briones de Miramontes’ daughter Carmen Miramontes, a midwife in Half Moon Bay.

Aerial View of Juana’s Homesite in Santa Clara County, 1923

Courtesy Special Collections, Stanford University

In 1844 Juana purchased Rancho la Purísima Concepción in Santa Clara County from two Ohlone Indians with the money she had earned in Yerba Buena. After Apolinario’s death in 1847, she left Yerba Buena and moved to the rancho. Little did she know that this property would provide a place of physical and economic refuge during the frenetic years following the discovery of gold in California in 1848. This aerial photograph shows the site of Juana’s home in the 1923. By this time, previous additions had altered the original structure, but it is still easy to see Juana’s strategic location for her home on the crest of a hill. During her lifetime, there would have been fewer big trees, allowing Juana an unobstructed view of her ranch lands.

Plat of the Rancho La Purísima Concepción, Finally Confirmed to Juana Briones [Santa Clara Co., Calif.] as Located by the U.S. Surveyor General, 1863

Land Case Map E-281

Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago in 1848 ending the Mexican-American War, California was ceded to the United States. Landowners like Juana were now forced to prove their land claims in American courts. Juana was involved in litigation for two decades, defending her claims to her properties. 

Establishing rights to Mexican-era land grants required extensive documentation. To support her 1852 claim to Rancho la Purísima Concepción, Juana needed an official survey, as required by the new land laws. In September 1858, U.S. Deputy Surveyor C. C. Tracy conducted a formal survey of the property. This official plat, filed in 1863, is based on Tracy’s and other surveyors’ field notes.

Henry W. Halleck, 1862

California Historical Society

In order to overcome some of the legal challenges of defending land claims, Juana temporarily hired Civil War general and California attorney Henry Wager Halleck, widely considered one of the best lawyers in California. Juana’s ability to negotiate her way through a complex system of laws and obstacles to successfully defend her property, despite being an illiterate woman from a humble background, speaks to her remarkable resolve and ingenuity. Of the sixty-six women who petitioned for and were granted land during the Mexican period, only twenty-two—including Juana—had their grants confirmed and patented by the United States. 

Historical Atlas Map of Santa Clara County, California (detail)

(San Francisco: Thompson & West, 1876)

California Historical Society

By 1876, the original Rancho La Purísima Concepción land grant had been divided into eight parcels. Martin Murphy owned the largest parcel, comprising more than 65 percent of the original rancho. Juana retained the second largest parcel, having divided the rest among her children.

California Bear Flag Belonging to the Briones Family, c. 1850–1900

Courtesy of the Bolinas Museum; photograph by Rebeca Méndez

The California Bear Flag was first flown during the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt, in which American insurgents led by John C. Frémont captured Sonoma and proclaimed the Republic of California. This flag was donated to the Bolinas Museum by the granddaughter of Pablo Briones, Juana’s nephew.

Five Generations of Briones Women, before 1901

Courtesy of the Bolinas Museum

We end as we began, with Juana’s descendants. Pictured here are five generations of Briones women, descended from Juana’s older brother Gregorio Briones and his wife, Ramona. Upper left: Ramona Garcia Briones Munos (wife of Gregorio); her daughter Maria del Rosario Briones (Mrs. Francisco Mesa; her daughter, Francisca Nott (Mrs. Samuel Clark); her daughter, Frances Clark (Mrs. Martin McGovern); her daughter, Elsie McGovern.

Shelly Kale

Publications and Strategic Projects Manager

skale@calhist.org

Marie Silva

Acting Director of Library & Archives

Co-curator, Juana Briones y su California

msilva@calhist.org

Sources

• J. N. Bowman, “Prominent Women of Provincial California,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly XXXIX, no. 2 (June 1957): 149–66
• Juana Briones y su California, California Historical Society, January 26–June 8, 2014, and online at https://californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/juana-briones/exhibit/
• Anne Petersen, “Exhibition Review: Juana Briones y su California ~ Pionera, Fundadora, Curandera,” The Public Historian 36, no. 4 (November 2014): 100–7
• Sam Whiting, “Juana Briones exhibit built around wall from her final home,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 25, 2014

Day of Infamy, 75 years later

Troops in Vehicles Lining Crissy Field, 1941

Courtesy of National Park Service

Articles

FOCUS: How the attack on Pearl Harbor changed the course of California

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/infographic-737460-focus-california.html

http://files.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/news/2016/focus/FOCUS_Cal_and_Pearl/cal-after-Pearl.gif

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http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/honor/

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ansel-Adams-Japanese-internment-WWII-6206027.php

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tora-Tora-Tora-over-SF-When-Japanese-10652456.php

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-pearl-harbor-75th-anniversary-20161207-story.html

http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-tr-hawaii-pearl-harbor-75th-anniversary-20161123-story.html

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2016-12-07/memories-of-pearl-harbor-san-mateo-man-reflects-on-surviving-infamous-attack/1776425172438.html

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/12/06/pearl-harbor-survivor-chuck-kohler-makes-up-for-lost-time-spreading-the-word/

http://people.com/human-interest/oldest-surviving-pearl-harbor-vet-to-visit-base-on-75th-anniversary-i-hope-people-never-forget/

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2016/12/pearl-harbors-role-in-a-historic-supreme-court-decision/

Previous California Historical Society pieces related to Pearl Harbor and its aftermath

http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/02/day-of-remembrance.html

http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2015/12/this-day-in-history-bombing-of-pearl.html

California Vintage: Wine and Spirits in the Golden StateDecember 5, 1933: Prohibition Ends!

Trucks at San Francisco Civic Center en route to returning Tipo Chianti Italian Swiss Colony wine to retail shelves and restaurants, marking the end of prohibition, December 1933
California Historical Society

In the image above, a procession of trucks returns wine to San Francisco for sale. The formality of the scene masks what certainly was a sigh of relief to the city, state, and nation brought by the end of Prohibition, the constitutional ban on producing, importing, transporting, and selling alcohol that was in effect from 1920 to 1933. It was, however, only the first leg in a journey to reestablish California as the wine-making giant it had been.

Winemaking in California is considered as old as the mid to late 1700s, when the Spanish missions were established along the Pacific coast region (1769–1833). Mission grapes were cultivated for the production of both sacramental and table wine.

Hannah Millard, Mission Grape, 1872
Courtesy Special Collections, UCLA Library

Photograph of Ferdinand Deppe’s 1832 painting of Mission San Gabriel, the leading wine producer among the California missions, 
c. 1900 
California Historical Society Collections at the University of Southern California

In the nineteenth century, grapes were the major agricultural product of Los Angeles, called the “city of vines” by the 1870s. By the end of the century, 45 of the state’s 52 counties were producing wine.

Topographical Map of California Showing Vineyard Districts in green . . . Total Production of Wine in 1902 40,000,000 gallons (California Wine Association, 1903) 
Courtesy Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps

Fast forward to 2015, when the annual impact of California’s wine industry on the state and world economies was $57.6 billion and $114.1 billion, respectively, and California was publicized as both the nation’s number one wine state and the world’s fourth largest wine producer.

Grape-pickers on Hastings Ranch, Pasadena, California, c. 1898 

California Historical Society Collections at the University of Southern California

But California winemakers didn’t always enjoy such economic success. Nor did their sister producers of alcoholic beverages, the distilleries and breweries. With passage of the 18th Amendment legalizing Prohibition, these industries faced near ruin, and in the hard times of the Great Depression they struggled even more. As wine historian Thomas Pinney observes, in Los Angeles County—once the wine capital of the state—the number of wineries dropped from 97 in 1935 to 35 in 1939, and those wineries that did exist made wine only irregularly.

In this blog series, we look at some aspects of the wine and spirits industries in the Golden State during these two challenging periods. We begin with Prohibition, which on this day in 1933, finally ended with ratification of the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th. After nearly 14 years, the nation was no longer “dry”!

Crowd outside the Belmont Grill celebrating the return of beer to Los Angeles, 1933 
Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection

Prohibition

(1929–33)

Imported Chinese rice wine destroyed under court order, 1928
Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the temperance movement—as the “dry” movement was called—had been gathering strength in state legislatures. By 1916, there were 26 dry states in the nation. By 1908 in California, sixty California towns had passed anti-liquor ordinances. Although Californians voted against statewide prohibition in 1914 and 1917, the vote was carried primarily by northern California voters.

One such voter was Andrea Sbarboro, founder of the Italian Swiss Colony winery in Asti, Sonoma County, who was actively anti-Prohibitionist. As wine historian Thomas Pinney explains, “A native Italian, he found it incredible that people concerned with temperance should be opposed to wine, and he labored hard to persuade the infidels.” In 1908, Sbarboro had founded the California Grape Protective Association and worked tirelessly to prevent passage of the 18th Amendment legalizing Prohibition, but, as Pinney writes, “All was in vain. The national mood was in favor of prohibition.”

Detail of a page from “How Prohibition Would Affect California,” 1916 
(San Francisco, CA: California Grape Protective Association)

“If Prohibition carries, thousands of acres of hillside vineyards will be rendered useless, as this land is suited only for wine growing,” Sbarboro’s marketer Horatio Stoll warned in his brochure How Prohibition Would Affect California.

The 18th Amendment was ratified in January 1919 and went into effect a year later. Exclusions in the Amendment, however, kept grape growers busy during its enforcement, including wine for religious and medicinal purposes and the production of up to 200 gallons of non-intoxicating cider or homemade fruit juice each year.

Advertisement, Washington Post, September 7, 1921 
Courtesy www.thehillshome.com

These loopholes paved the way for a lucrative trade with home winemaking businesses and eastern markets. The grape-growing industry was saved!

Prohibition-era L. M. Martini Grape Products Company, producing sacramental and medicinal wine and grape concentrate (“Forbidden Fruit”) for legal home winemaking, Kingsburg, Central Valley, California, c. 1922
Courtesy www.louismartini.com

Most vintners, however, became unemployed. Scientific training in viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis—in existence since 1880—was discontinued, providing a shortage of trained vintners in the years after Prohibition. By the time the 18th Amendment was finally repealed in 1933, vintners faced a new challenge: the Great Depression.

Watch for the next blog in our series California Vintage: Wine and Spirits in the Golden State on December 12.

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources
Thomas Pinney, City of Vines: The History of Wine in Los Angeles (Berkeley: Heyday Books/California Historical Society, forthcoming September 2017)

Frona Eunice Wait, Wines and Vines of California (San Francisco: The Bancroft Company, 1889)

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Love California Wine and Spirits? Don’t Miss These CHS Events!

December 10, 2016
California Historical Society, 678 Mission, San Francisco

CHS opens its new exhibition, Vintage: Wine, Beer, and Spirits Labels from the Kemble Collections on Western Printing and Publishing, December 10, 2016–April 16, 2017


December 13, 6:30 pm
California Historical Society, 678 Mission, San Francisco

The California Historical Society’s annual holiday party
Craft cocktails, legendary California wine, innovative brews, and live entertainment
Learn more

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Thomas Pinney’s City of Vines: The History of Wine in Los Angeles is the winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award. Read more about the Award

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